“We don’t know a thing,” said Betty. “Of course, we wouldn’t ask her, and it must be terrible to come back to teaching after just saying goodbye to your husband. But I imagine that she will tell us things after a while. Isn’t she a dear?”
On the next morning, the returned teacher met her classes as usual, a group of friendly girls clustering around her desk before the first recitation. A little before the second bell, one of the senior girls came in, her finger on a difficult line in Horace’s Satires, and said, “I simply can not understand, Dr. Carver, what he means!”
“Dr. Carver!”
“‘Dr. Carver’, indeed, do you want to insult her?”
The senior looked up wonderingly at the girls who thus exclaimed, for she was not conscious of having used the wrong name. Then she laughed. “Please forgive me, Miss West, I did not realize what I was saying. My mind was on those lines I could not get. Why, what is wrong now? You are all laughing!”
Mrs. Norris laughed, too, patted the senior’s arm and said, “Never mind, you will get used to the change. I don’t mind at all. If you forget, you need not apologize, but try to get it right the next time. There is the bell. Take your seats, please.”
No one would have known that Patricia West Norris had anything to worry over, and if there was any difference it was only that she was more inspiring. “I am a soldier’s wife,” she said to Betty, as one day they clambered out over the rocks and sat viewing restless waters, floating clouds and flying gulls. “If he can go as cheerfully as they all are going, to face the guns, I certainly will have to live up to him. I shall want to be by myself a little, of course, to think and to write letters, but you girls are helping me very much, and I am not going to mourn till something happens, and I am hoping that nothing will. I shan’t pretend that it is easy, though.”
Betty stroked her hand and they sat silently a little while. Betty had her own reasons for sober thoughts at times, but kept a bright face.
“See, Mrs. Patty (which was Betty’s name for her), there is smoke coming from that little house over the cave, and somebody is out in a boat fishing. We were always going to investigate that place.”
“It is probably the headquarters for some rough fishermen and you girls must keep away.”